Asteroid Flyby
Asteroid Flyby
This week, a 550-meter-wide asteroid flew so close to the Earth that it was visible with high-powered binoculars, according to NASA. But how close is close, exactly, in space?
By Jin Kim
CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
Sources:
Mount Everest (National Geographic);
International Space Station (NASA);
Driving distance (U.S. Department of Transportation);
SES-1 (Satellite Calculations);
Godzilla (the 1990s version of Godzilla was 100m tall, according to tohokingdom.com);
1998 KJ9 (NASA);
Light speed (NASA);
The Moon (NASA);
Walking speed (Karen Aspelin, Portland State University);
U.S. deficit (U.S. Department of Treasury);
New Horizons (NASA);
2004 BL86 (NASA).
Important notes: Items in this graphic are not depicted at scale. The Death Star is not real. Unfortunately. Nor is Godzilla, and if he was it's unlikely he'd survive in space. Flying saucers have never been proven to exist. Original icon images: from Pixabay, NASA and Capital News Service. The asteroids depicted in this graphic are generic asteroid images; Capital News Service was unable to find high resolution images of the actual asteroids.